Dental plaque is believed to be the principal etiological factor in both periodontal disease and dental caries. It initiates an inflammatory process in supporting structures of teeth and if allowed to continue accumulating leads to loss of teeth. Clinical tests of dental plaque maturations show that in many cases after only three days, a thick plaque develops in the interproximal areas of adjacent teeth and gingival margin, and by the sixth day a heavy, gelatinous plaque covers large areas of the tooth surfaces.
The conventional means of removing dental plaque is by mechanical means including brushing and flossing. While chemical and biological agents have been proposed for controlling the bacteria which create the plaque, such agents have so far not achieved great success, and brushing and flossing remain the primary means of controlling plaque. While brushing removes plaque from the major surfaces, it is normally unsatisfactory for effective removal of entrapped food particles and plaque from the inaccessible, interproximal areas of adjacent teeth. Therefore, supplemental daily flossing has been recommended by dentists as an essential factor in the control of dental diseases.
At present, dental floss is generally sold on rollers and spools in dispensers, from which a piece of floss is severed by the user and held between both hands. This takes some development of skill to say nothing of patience and manual dexterity. A length of floss held between the thumb and forefinger of each hand must be stretched taut, inserted between adjacent teeth and moved and up and down to effect the desired cleaning. Another working technique includes wrapping the opposite ends of a floss strand about a finger of each hand and then introducing the two fingers of both hands into the mouth, inserting the floss between adjacent teeth and maneuvering it to effect the desired cleaning. Both procedures are clumsy, unpleasant and time consuming. Consequently, while the great majority of people brush their teeth at least once a day, far too few use dental floss on a daily basis according to a survey by the American Dental Association. The most negligent of those surveyed were adult males, more than forty-five percent of whom did not use floss at all. For this reason gum disease is a problem for up to ninety percent of the adults in this country.
For more than one hundred years there have been attempts to improve and modernize the dental flossing technique by development of holders onto which floss is detachably or permanently secured, and a few hundred patents have already been granted on various flossing devices. These go back to the Shurtleft U.S. Pat. No. 147,987 of 1874, and Wallace U.S. Pat. No. 175,795 of 1876. In general, the dental flossers of the prior art have fallen into two basic categories, namely the reuseable or permanent dental flossers wherein the customer threads the device with floss and then throws away the floss after use, but retains the flosser; and the disposable dental flossers having a structure to which the floss is permanently attached, the entire device being thrown away after one or more uses and replaced by another similar device.
In general, the dental flossers of the permanent type are, as would naturally be expected, of considerably more complex construction and made of more expensive materials. Examples of such devices are those shown in the patents to Munroe U.S. Pat. No. 2,217,917; Storm U.S. Pat. No. 2,059,287; Chamberlin et al U.S. Pat. No. 2,784,722; and Jordan U.S. Pat. No. 1,815,408. Additional examples of such devices are mentioned in parent copending applications Ser. No. 432,249 and/or are cited of record therein.
Disposable flossers, on the other hand, have to be made inexpensively and the floss has to be permanently attached to the flosser in some way. Examples of patents disclosing disposable flossers are the Chodorow U.S. Pat. No. 3,974,842; Katz U.S. Pat. No. 3,926,201; and Henne U.S. Pat. No. 2,187,899. Buscarino U.S. Pat. No. 2,443,415 shows both disposable and permanent flossers. A major problem with disposable flossers of the prior art is the inadequate means of attachment of the floss, because in all cases the prior art requires either complex and expensive, or insufficient means of attachment. Thus, the Chodorow and Katz patents require that the flosser be molded about the floss, which is extremely expensive. Knotting has also been suggested, but this also is expensive and in some cases inadequate. Henne U.S. Pat. No. 2,187,899 suggests various types of mechanical attachment, but none of these provide adequate anchoring; often when floss is forced between two adjacent teeth and the spacing is small, tremendous tensile force is applied and mechanical attachments of this type are not adequate, the floss ends merely pulling from their mechanical anchoring means.
With regard to the molding of the flosser about the ends of the floss, such as shown in the Chodorow and Katz patents, this produces not only a very expensive product, but also limits the types of floss which can be used. For example, medicated and flavored flosses, wherein the medicaments and flavorings are heat sensitive or volatile, cannot be used in the hot molding process because the heat of the operation and the molten plastic will degrade and/or drive off the medicament and/or flavoring material.
As a result, the vast majority of throw away flossers have either failed to undergo successful technological scrutiny of dental appliance manufacturers, market tests, or public acceptance. Thus, the up-to-date dental floss made of nylon fibers and sold in spool-dispensers, which is used according to the primitive flossing procedure described above, is practically the only measure presently available for use by the general public. There are a few permanent flossers which have reached the market place but because of various factors including relatively high cost, these have not achieved great success. Similarly, one disposable flosser is known to be on the market, but this appears to be made by the method of Katz and/or Chodorow, and these flossers are very expensive.